The interoception and imagination loop in hypnotic phenomena

Abstract We tested a working hypothesis that the ideomotor and motor-control suggestions measured by current hypnotizability scales depend on the activation of an interoception-imagination processing loop. In three experiments, participants were exposed to an induction phase, Items 3 (mosquito hallucination) and 8 (arm immobilization) of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale, Form C, and a new version of Item 8 involving the additional activation of imaginative and interoception processes. We found that this modified version of Item 8 elicited greater responsiveness to suggestion, irrespective of its position in the sequence of hypnotic items. We argue that this interoception-imagination loop hypothesis provides a useful information processing analysis for understanding several hypnotic phenomena.